I played through this the last couple of days, and here are my thoughts:
I'm really a big fan of most everything you've done here. This is something I've imagined being made for a long-ass time, probably really ever since I first played the Invasion 2 and found out that world 8 had been completely reworked (admittedly for good reason). You brought it to life quite well. I'm a big fan of the world 4 and 8 rethemes, making them worlds stand out more (and causing the lack of swimmable water in world 8 to make more sense). I appreciate the subdued use of custom graphics, which feels very Invasioney to me. While there's still a lot that feels very dated about the Invasion 1 at its core you did a great job of giving this the veneer of a modern SMBX project, and you made the whole thing feel new again. I'm glad my beloved Crushing Hazard can finally see the light of day again.
That said, I do have a few criticisms:
- While the new world map is very pretty and its simplistic structure helps with this issue a lot, I still think it would be a lot better if the levels with secret exits were marked as such. People have for sure made graphics for red versions of the Mario 3 level tiles before and I would recommend adding them to make things a bit more clear, especially since many of the secrets in the Invasion 1 are pretty obscure.
- Replacing certain music tracks with Mario 3 music tracks is a huge mistake in my mind. The Corneria theme is honestly one of the most iconic bits of the Invasion 1 and 2 to me, and makes the invasion levels stand out way more than they do using the Mario 3 airship theme that we've all heard a thousand times before. I'd strongly recommend returning Corneria to the invasion levels and leaving the airship theme at the end of world 8.
- Similarly, the replacement of the Mario RPG Forest Maze theme with Mario 3 and SMW tracks in world 7 is also quite disappointing to me. I think the original Invasion did a good job of establishing a unique musical identity for itself that you wouldn't expect from a Mario 3 clone and it's sad to me for that to be stripped away. Also, changing the music track in The Rawest Forest obscures the reference it's making to this old Newgrounds flash music video that's based on the Forest Maze theme; it was pretty popular at the time:
https://youtu.be/QfXng_kD9ZA
- "The Water is a Lie" doesn't make as much sense for the first level of world 8 any more, since it doesn't have water that you would think would have a hitbox any more.
- In Shell Hell, the wall at the far left of the first section doesn't extend past the top of the screen, making it possible to fly over which causes Mario to fall to his death.
- In the level Underground Battle Maze, the coin pictured in the screenshot below caused me to assume that the secret was down the hole with the coin in it, particularly because I had vague memories of the original secret and SMBX2 has vertical screen wrap capability. I would recommend moving the coin up one tile at least (probably add others around it too) because its current location strongly implies to me that something is down there.
- A couple of issues in the level Survival of the Fastest – first of all I'd like to say that I'm really impressed by what you've done with the level. Phantos work great for it conceptually, I was wondering what would be done with it because of how much of a multiplayer gimmick level it fundamentally is. I would however recommend blocking mounts from this level for a couple of reasons as seen in the screenshot below. For one, Yoshi can swallow the key without triggering the Phanto, which you did anticipate as an issue for the Birdo fight in The Rawest Forest. Also, while mounted, Mario can survive the spikes at the bottom of this pit, making it a softlock – better to replace with lava or a death pit probably.
- At the point in Air Raid pictured in the screenshot below, the space for moving the clown car back out after pressing the purple switch is extremely tight and likely to result in death if you're not extra careful, since you have to press down to get back in the clown car to begin with. This wasn't as much of a problem in the original episode since there was no lava, only a death pit that can be approached much more safely, but if any part of the clown car touches lava Mario instantly dies. I would recommend moving this area up a few tiles.
- At the point in Crushing Hazard pictured in the screenshot below, Mario will be mostly stuck if he's on the left side of the gravity blocks. There's another set of gravity blocks blocking the exit in a similar way on the left side. I say "mostly" because I was able to get Mario to where he is in this screenshot by zipping through the blocks, but this of course doesn't work if Mario is small and is far less than ideal in general, so this is pretty much a softlock as is.
- Directly after completing The King of the Koopas, Mario ends up in this position on the world map shown in the screenshot below and is unable to be moved. I don't think this is supposed to happen because I don't have 100% completion on my save file and there's a pipe above The King of the Koopas on the map.
I know some of these are a bit nitpicky, but believe me that it's only due to my appreciation for what you've done with this project and my own fixations on the Invasion series. You've done a really cool thing here.
